Games & Internet

Managing your Demos

Like you can probably tell from the title and the short description, I want to share with you how to manage your demos. If you’ve ever been in the habit of watching demos, the amount of demos you have in your collection can be overwhelming especially when you’re trying to find one in particular. Well here are some of the steps I take to remedy this issue.

1. Rename your archives: sometimes it’s not enough to have an archive numbered or named blackman vs teo. Something more descriptive is required… like Teo’s Laughable Defeat, or you can take a systematic approach by doing something like Blackman_vs_Teo_2, which works well also. Just make sure it points out the specific file’s identity to you.

2. Get rid of the demos that you for sure don’t want.I don’t mean delete all the ones that you’ve seen, but rather delete the trash replays. For instance, for me, I may have a typical replay of me versing a computer that isn’t worth rewatching or a match on GamerRanger that ends in 2 minutes because of a network error. Something like that is of no value so I’ll remove them from my collection. (This one is tough for me because I’m a bit of a pack rat).

3. The final and best step! Reduce the clutter by… Subsequent to step two, create a .7z archive of the remaining demos you have and keep it in your ‘Tzar/Demos’ folder. After you do this, your demos are backed-up so you can now delete all the unarchived demos from the folder. From here on out, whenever you want to watch a specific demo, you can go into the archive and dump the demo(s) into the Demos folder. (Note: Tzar will not recognize the .7z file but it will recognize the raw .wdm file. That is why this works to reduce clutter). After you’ve finished, you’re free to delete the raw demos to keep down the number of files. Also to add any new demos to your collection, just drag them into that archive and *BAM* they are saved!

Conclusion: So I just helped you: Optimize your demo collection by deleting useless demos, Identify and Recognize specific demos by selective naming, and lastly, Reduce clutter by packing all the demos into a neat .7z archive.

If you have any questions, comments, or other suggestions regarding this, feel free to comment here and I’ll make corresponding editions if need be! Thanks for your time. I hope this helps!